Hour of the Witch

As Mary begins to build more confidence in her decision to leave Thomas and experiences frustration over the way she’s being treated, she increasingly confronts Predetermination Versus Self-Determination. When Jonathan and Peregrine visit her at her parent’s home and Jonathan asks whether she misses “the natural order of living with a man” (132, emphasis added), Mary defends herself by replying, “I have heard now twice what thou hast said about a natural order. But a woman is not a serpent to be crushed under her husband’s foot” (136). Mary rebukes the idea of a “natural order” because it becomes the justification for the abuse she experiences at Thomas’s hands, while her imagery of the “serpent [. . .] crushed under her husband’s foot” rejects the mythos of original sin, where the Devil tempts Eve to take from the Tree of Knowledge in the form of a serpent. Gradually, Mary is questioning and even rejecting the frameworks of Puritan society and its Gender Roles and Violence Against Women, choosing instead to exercise her own agency.

Mary’s kiss with Henry also represents another awakening for Mary, one in which her will and desire take precedence over social and religious norms. As Henry leans in, Mary moves toward him, following her desire and not censoring herself as she has so many times before: “[W]ithout thinking, her body moving with a will of its own, all want and need, she stood on her toes and opened her lips to his” (153). Mary’s will overrides all else and she openly displays her own sexual desire—a scandalous action for many women in Puritan Boston. Mary also begins to reject any guilt for her actions, thinking that while Hell might burn, the frigid landscape of Boston is “no Heaven either” (145). Mary begins to see, in a new light, the people in Boston and her position as a woman within it, further cementing her commitment to her own agency.

The trial demonstrates both the misogyny and superstition present in Puritan ideology and Boston society in 1662, demonstrating the theme of The Dangers of Mass Hysteria. Though the trial is a petition for divorce, the line of questioning from various court officials and the testimony of multiple witnesses veer toward discussions of witchcraft, with misogynistic undertones. When Thomas’s lawyer Philip Bristol asks Catherine to recount the events of the day Thomas stabbed Mary, she brings up witchcraft in conjunction with her brother’s death and the tines in the ground. Bristol proceeds to say, “It seemed possible to Catherine that Mary Deerfield was trying to make her brother sicker. Mary was ensuring that Satan got Catherine’s brother and—in return—Mary, hitherto barren, would get a child” (174). This observation from Bristol suggests that Mary is so desperate to bear a child she would sacrifice a human life, making a deal with the Devil to end her barrenness.  

Justifications like these for witchcraft run rampant through Boston and, specifically, through Mary’s trial. Instead of focusing on why Mary alleges abuse and trying to determine if Thomas stabbed her, witnesses blame her for witchcraft and court officials bring up her reproductive capabilities, suggesting her barrenness as a motive and mark of suspicion—a strategy both sexist and evasive. As the trial unfolds, it will become even clearer that it is Mary, and not Thomas, who is to be judged.